Smart tree crop sprayer utilizing sensor fusion and artificial intelligence

Delivering the appropriate amount of chemicals for each plant based on their needs is essential for reducing costs, waste, and labor. Smart agricultural machinery can provide variable-rate technologies using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine vision to optimize spraying applications. In this research, a low-cost smart sensing system for controlling airblast tree crop sprayers was designed and evaluated using citrus as a case study. The prototype comprised a LiDAR, machine vision, GPS, flow meters, sensor fusion, and AI to scan trees for tree height, tree classification, and fruit counting. Specifically, this smart sensing system can detect and classify objects to tree or non-tree (e.g., human, field constructions), measure tree height and canopy density, and detect and count fruit. Based on this information, it controls spraying nozzles to optimize spraying applications. A novel software was written in C++ and ran on an Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX embedded computer to process and control the data utilizing data fusion and AI techniques. The smart sensing system's results for tree height estimate indicated a relatively low average error of 6%. A convolutional neural network (CNN) was used to perform tree classification with an average accuracy of 84% in classifying the collected imagery into mature, young, dead, and non-tree objects. The fruit count module (also a CNN) had an F1 score of 89%, compared to ground-truth labeled images of mature and immature citrus fruits. Finally, the adoption of this new sensing method reduced spraying volume by 28%, compared to traditional spraying applications.